Nelly Grey was a little English girl who had never been in England. She was born in China, and went with her father and mother to live in the British Legation compound in Peking when she was only three years old. A compound is a kind of big courtyard, with other courts and houses inside. Nelly’s was a large one, and very open. It had several houses in it: not like we have in England, but only one storey high, and with deep, shady verandahs round them. There were also a little church, some tennis-courts, and several small buildings for the Chinese servants at the back.

Nelly could speak both English and Chinese very well. She could play the piano a little, though not so well as most English children of nine years old. She could ride a donkey, skate, and play tennis, but she had never seen a bicycle or a real carriage, because there were no such things in Peking. But Nelly was quite lively although she was shut up in a compound all the time. She would have been ashamed to feel dull and cross, for she had once heard the Minister’s wife say, ’Nelly Grey is an intelligent child and has sense enough to amuse herself.’ Since then she had felt that she must not let the lady change her opinion. Besides, there were several other foreign children in Peking whom Nelly saw from time to time. In her compound, living next door, was Baby Buckle. He had only been there six months, for that was his age, and Nelly loved him very much. He was such a jolly little fellow, always laughing and crowing, and almost jumping out of the arms of his Chinese nurse (who was called an amah) when he saw Nelly coming. And he used to open his mouth wide and try to bite this old yellow woman, and put his little fists into her eyes and kick her, until the poor old thing was almost worn out and could scarcely walk or even stand on her little misshapen feet. To be sure, he slept a great deal, or the amah would have been obliged to hand him over to a younger woman. There was another boy in the Legation, a little Scotchman, who was one year older than Nelly. They played together very often. But Nelly did not like boys only baby boys, she said. Indeed, she often made Arthur Macdonald feel very lonely and unhappy because she preferred to leave him and go off to play with a Chinese girl of her own age, called Shiao Yi. Shiao in Chinese means ‘little,’ so we will call her Little Yi.

Little Yi’s feet had never been bound, because she was a Manchu child, and the Manchu women do not bind their feet; so she could run and skip about the compound almost as freely as Nelly. Almost, I say, not quite, because Chinese children are not dressed for running about. Their shoes are hard and clumsy, and in winter their clothes are so thickly wadded that they look like little balls.

Then there were two little girls of eleven and twelve who lived at the German Legation, and were called Bertha and Liza Wolf. It was very strange for Nelly the first time these children came to see her. Mrs. Grey was calling upon their mother, who told her that they had just arrived from home with their governess. At once Mrs. Grey invited them to come to tea the next day, and she did not think of asking if they could speak English; neither did their mother, who spoke English beautifully, remember that her children could not do so. When they arrived, Nelly was alone with Chu Ma, her amah, and they all laughed a great deal when they found that they could not understand one another. Bertha Wolf had picked up the Chinese word ‘pu,’ which means ‘not,’ and she kept repeating that and mixing it up with German. It sounded very funny. Nelly showed them her dolls’ house, and Liza made the dolls sit down and stand up in a marvellous way by bending their legs and sticking pins into them. When tea-time came the children had become fast friends by means of nods, shakes of the head, and the Chinese word ‘pu’; which shows that little girls can get on very well together even when they don’t chatter all the time. Since then Nelly had been taken to the German Legation twice a week to have German lessons from Fräulein, Liza’s and Bertha’s governess, and they, besides quickly picking up Chinese, came and took English lessons from Mrs. Grey very often.

At the American Legation Nelly had a friend, Bessie Bates, who had a brother named Bob, a regular tease. Bessie was only eight, but Bob was eleven, and every one said that he ought to be at school in America. Then there were several children living in the mission compounds, but none of them were near Nelly. At one of the missions there were fifteen children among the four families stationed there. Nelly told her mother that it made her hoarse to go to that mission, because there were so many people to talk to.

Even if there had been no other companions, Nelly would have been content to be with her father and mother. She used to love the time just before she went to bed, when Mrs. Grey nearly always read to her and told her stories about England. They often talked of Nelly’s brother Tom, who had gone to school at Brighton when the Greys came to Peking.

With seven o’clock came Nelly’s amah to put her to bed. The amah would have willingly done everything for Nelly, but Mrs. Grey insisted that she must undress herself and not become helpless, as children brought up in the East often do, because there are so many servants to wait on them. At first she used to feel a little afraid when the amah blew out the candle and left her alone in her little bed in the middle of a great big dark room; but her mother had taught her that God takes care of us in the dark just the same as at any other time, and she soon learnt to curl herself up and go quietly to sleep.